The latest opinion poll by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission shows more people are heading toward supporting independence.
According to the opinion poll, there are more people who support independence (32.3 percent) than those who support unification (21.8 percent) or the status quo (19.7 percent).
Never before have so many people supported independence. Moreover, its percentage of support has grown from the 29.6 percent in the commission's survey in 2000, while the percentages of support for status quo and unification have declined -- from 21.5 percent and 26.6 percent, respectively.
It must be pointed out that the percentage of supporters for unification has undergone a significant decline -- more than 5 percent -- since 2000. This figure cannot be brushed aside, since it has exceeded the usual 3 percent margin of error. The question then becomes what is prompting this gradual shift.
One reason may be that, while Taiwan's democracy may be suffering from some troubling growing pains over the past years, democracy is nevertheless becoming increasingly indispensable to the people -- now that they have come to know the feeling of being one's own master.
It is becoming more and more unthinkable for them that, until democratization, they lived a life in which they remained silent under one-party autocracy, despite the fact that the nation had a robust economy at the time. For all the apparent opportunities to strike rich in the lucrative Chinese market these days, it is even more unimaginable that they would have to return to that kind of life under Chinese rule in the event of unification.
A no less important reason for this shift is perhaps China's high-handed tactics in dealing with Taiwan over the years. On Tuesday, China's ambassador to the US, Yang Jiechi (
What kind of national security concern can Taiwan possibly pose to China when Taipei is "allowed" only to purchase defensive arms and when it has its hands full trying to stay alive under Chinese threats?
Yang was quoted as saying "It is [Taiwan's] actions that are actually causing instability."
On Nov. 26, an official from China's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhou Mingwei (
These are just two examples of the kind of abusive and demeaning language from China that people in Taiwan must put up with on a regular basis. How can they not feel resentful?
Also playing a role is perhaps the unprecedented friendliness of the US government toward Taiwan and international condemnation against Chinese missile threats.
Finally, perhaps more people are finally realizing that reality is closing in on them, and that it is simply naive to think that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely.
With China growing stronger everyday in terms of economic, military and political prowesses, today's status quo is already different from that of a few years ago. Under the circumstances, people must take a stance over the question of independence versus unification.
If the people are indeed opting for independence over unification, can the world and China respect the people's right to self-determination?
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS